Aussie Rules, Rugby and Soccer on common (analytics) ground

04 Oct 2017

Analytics

Innovation

We’ve just finished a weekend chock full of elite sport with the AFL and NRL grand finals. And while the grand final is the pinnacle of the sport, on-the-ground sports performance will soon be dwarfed by the performance of real-time analytics in the stands, coach’s rooms, operations centres and marketing departments.

Baseball’s “moneyball” was one the first in sports to leverage analytics. Since then most professional sports use on-field data and analytics to improve player and team performance. But that’s just the beginning.

Analytics is now driving strategies around team performance, player health, customer engagement and event/crowd management. And, as much of it is real-time, the effect (and revenue impact) is immediate – and needs to be, the prime window of opportunity only lasts as long as the time in the stadium.

This article on sports analytics highlights the broad use of data and analytics at FC Bayern Munich and Sacramento Kings. It also highlights the huge impact of the whole analytics ecosystem –from IoT data feeds, through point-of-sale data, customer database profiles, real-time monitoring to real-time analytics and the activation of insights via digital devices.

It’s an ecosystem that extends the prime window of opportunity beyond just time on field.